BACK when Buddha was a baby, I loved cuddling up to the easy sleaze of “Melrose Place.” The affairs, the secrets, the relentless criminal activity among that group of insanely good-looking tenants always did my nasty little heart a world of good.

So, I was not happy to know that, A: A new group of tenants was living in the joint, and B: that some upstarts had the nerve to try to recreate that old black magic. But C: I was wrong. Dead wrong.

The new “Melrose Place” is as good and sometimes better than the old “Melrose Place.” Think of it as a renovation, or in LA terms, a facelift.

In fact, the new tenants actually made me forget the old tenants rather quickly. Well, I didn’t forget all of them, because two of them are back but in a new format. Now the series is an ongoing whodunit.

Remember Sydney Andrews (Laura Leighton) from the original series — the one we loved to hate so much? Well, she’s baaaack — or make that back from the dead, as she gets killed in tonight’s episode, but not killed off. The show’s writers somehow managed to keep all the cheese we love so much, while supplying us with a solid mystery that’s fun to try to solve.

Told through flashbacks, we learn the backstory — and it’s quite a story. In fact, it turns out every one of the tenants had a reason to kill the belovedly-hateful Sydney.

The tenants with a motive include PR whiz Ella (Katie Cassidy); chef/AA buddy Auggie (Colin Egglesfield); intern/escort Lauren (Stephanie Jacobsen); wannabe-filmmaker Jonah (Michael Rady); first-grade teacher/Jonah’s fiance Riley (Jessica Lucas); and new tenant, 21-year-old Violet (Ashlee Simpson-Wentz). Adding to the list of black hearts is larcenous David Breck (Shaun Sipos), who, it turns out, is the son of one of my favorite (and still insanely good-looking) characters from the old show! Delicious. I’d tell you who it is, but then it would ruin the surprise when the door of the Lamborghini opens and we see him.

So, who done it? I don’t know, but I did, in fact, suspect each and every one of them as the for-sure killer at some point.

Terrific fun, and much classier than the old show, but still with plenty of cheese. If you’re wondering how they turned this old package of individually-sliced cheddar into a fresh slab of brie, you’ll be interested to know that the new producers are from “Smallville,” and tonight’s pilot was directed by Davis Guggenheim — the Oscar winner for “An Inconvenient Truth.” Geez. I hope cheese doesn’t pollute the environment!